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Like Steve Jobs he is amongst the group of people who could say anything anyway they like and some people will find a way to glorify it by a factor of a million
by borplk 9y ago
Like Steve Jobs he is amongst the group of people who could say anything anyway they like and some people will find a way to glorify it by a factor of a million.
If you remove their name from the things they have said or written, at least many of them seem fairly average sensible statements, like something you would read here from a random member.
I'd be interested to see a "blind test" for these things. I bet the bias would show.
As in, display something from Alan Kay but post it on a random internet forum as JoeSchmo11, and you will have lots of people disagreeing with it and tearing it apart without hesitation.
But oh look if Steve Jobs or Alan Kay or Elon Musk's name is attached to it suddenly becomes a unique gem of knowledge to be cherished by the humanity for the rest of time and surely the fault lies with anyone not agreeing with it right? Because after all they could not possibly be more right than those authority figures?
I'm not making a judgement about this, neither am I surprised by it. Just saying that you should ask yourself exactly how much of your own brain power and judgement do you use to judge the quality of an idea and how much of your conclusion is conveniently borrowed from your image of the author?
It reminds me of when Elon Musk talked about the probability of our universe being a simulation.
I'm not saying he is right or wrong, just using that as an example. But if JoeSchmo11 said exactly the same thing people would just dismiss it.
But when Elon Musk says it all the newspapers go mad and write stories about it.
Again I'm not saying it shouldn't be like this, reputation matters, I get it.
But my point is that the fact that this happens to the degree that it does is in some ways a sad admission that we are incapable of evaluating thoughts and ideas independently of their originators and on their own merits. Instead we borrow from the past credibility and the authority of the people they are attached to.
- azag0 9y agoThat this happens is of course difficult to disprove. My only defense is that very often, I read things from acclaimed people and think "bullshit". I don't have any particular reason to like what Alan Kay says besides having read previously things from him that I liked. Also, in this particular case, my point wasn't really about the truth value of what he claims (which I'm not fit to judge), but about the clarity of how he claims it.
- mquander 9y agoWhat is the sad admission here? That not everyone establishes 100% of their belief system from first principles, and instead adopts some of it empirically based on other reasoners' beliefs? I don't consider that a bug. If I don't know anything about X, and the Alan Kay of X comes and tells me something about X, it's pretty likely to be true. If equally-ignorant-as-me-person tells me something about X, it's not as likely to be true. That's the meaning of knowledge and ignorance. None of this precludes thinking for yourself about anything. It's just the thing you do in addition to thinking for yourself about it, if you want to have true beliefs.
- medfok 9y agoYou don't get it. You are confusing lack of bias/prejudice with rationality, which is incorrect with regard to any coherent belief system. Your ignorance is harmful and you should try to learn something about the issues that you comment on. I can point you towards resources if you are interested; message me.
- wruza 9y agoHonestly, I didn’t have any effing clue who Paul Graham is after reading half of his essays and description of Arc. Realized that he wasn’t yet another dev blogger only after someone mentioned on HN that HN is somewhat his. Also, it feels like Joel Spolsky was read in my environment long before stackoverflow.com existed (or became popular). Just one single data point against your hypothesis.